We were only able to do Marrowgar in ICC tonight due to unprepared raiders and LDW’s mana shield being twice what it used to be, however I was able to pull 20K DPS on Marrowgar (missed #1 spot by about 20k damage), and 40k DPS on trash pulls.

Okay, so I really AM glad we have leather specialization, and fortunately I have been unfortunate to not get many cloth pieces of gear in ICC. That being said, I’m going to be running around in ilvl 245 bracers come 4.0.1 if I can’t manage to find something better… and soon.

How many pieces have you guys had to scramble to replace with leather?

Starsurge (also casting when Shooting Stars Procs, or is off cooldown.)

Wrath until Lunar Eclipse

Repeat.

Tips and Tricks

I always cast Starfall FIRST in my Lunar Eclipse, as Starfall is not benefited by haste, I do not want to waste one GCD while under Nature’s Grace (which happens when I moonfire)

I always cast Force of Nature when I’m NOT under Nature’s Grace (usually between Eclipse), for the same reason as Starfall.

Nature’s Grace is an odd talent, in that it doesn’t grant the spell haste to the spell that causes it to proc. That being said, you’ll want to Insect Swarm before Moonfire in Lunar Eclipse, and Sunfire in Solar Eclipse. Sunfire’s base damage is higher then that of Insect Swarm, when both are glyphed.

While Berserking does not specifically state “haste”, it does give additional DoT ticks.

I was able to get Mastery to work on the new PTR build (I had to copy a new character over and learn mastery before I talented anything), so I reforged for Mastery and ran another 10mil damage to get a new parse. The DPS numbers obviously went up as I’m running 42% (158 Mastery) Eclipse damage versus 25% Eclipse damage (About 1.5k dps).

I’m ran these exact same numbers reforging the 158 Mastery into 134 Haste/24 Crit Rating to see how it skews the percentages. If Graylo’s calcs should be right, the 158 haste should easily win out. I think you can see how Insect Swarm lost a slight amount of percentage whereas Starfall gained it, as Starfall actually gains from Mastery and not Haste.

I got bored and dumped another 15 million damage into a training dummy on PTR and took screenshots of all of the recount data, in case you’re curious.

Note: Mastery is broken right now, so Eclipse should be hitting for 12% harder, so if you add 12% to some of these max crit numbers, they’ll be pretty impressive. (32k+ Starsurges. It’s a shame they don’t make it affected by Moonfury).

ALSO: This is my first time using WordPress’s Gallery feature. Let me know if you have issues viewing the images.

Here’s a breakdown of damage to a heroic training dummy, so you can see how damage scales and where our percentages are.

My rotation was:

Insect Swarm, Wrath, Starsurge, Wrath until Lunar Eclipse

Starfall, Moonfire, Starfire, Starsurge, Starfire until Solar Eclipse

Insect Swarm, Wrath x2, Starsurge, Wrath until Lunar Eclipse, Repeat.

If you notice, Insect Swarm does a LOT more damage then Moonfire, even though I have both glyphed. (I also noticed that glyphs do not work if they’re not in their right slot, so you have to destroy your Major Starfire glyph and replace it in a prime slot).

Insect swarm max tick was about 10k, whereas Moonfire was only about 6k.

I was averaging about 10.5k DPS. On a live training dummy I’m ~10k DPS. This DPS value will go up once we can get Glyph of Starsurge.

I still need to figure out if it’s worth clipping a DoT and refreshing right before the Eclipse expires to maintain the 37% damage to the DoT.

Squawkbox

Latest on Mon, 08:16 am

Athosian: @Thravia - at 16.5k crit u can effectively stack mastery. But.. you must have the T16 4set in order to not loose out on procs.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre.
According to all my calculations, and simulationcrafts, mastery is better than both haste and crit, and especially better than haste once you get past the GCD cap - so why are all balance druids going full on with crit/haste?
I am having trouble figuring out what is most effective, and I am currently creating a BiS list for 5.4, but I don't know if I should go with a mastery/haste build, or crit/haste.
Here is a chart of my stat weights, http://i.imgur.com/lQMfnFV.png (I am currently at 10300 haste, 16000 crit, and 547 item level)

Kogot: Hey! Just wanted to say thanks for having this page! I love it!

Sunfyre: Thravia: Not sure. I'm curious how this interacts with the nerf. If it's 8% on all targets, that'd be nice.

Sunfyre: Quiver: I'd stick with the lower BP until you can comfortably hit the higher one without sacrificing too much crit.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre. Whats your thougths on the new T16 set bonus? It's been changed again.

Quiver: Hi Sunfyre!
I am low ilvl Boomkin (around 517). After getting the 1st haste breakpoint(5273) i started stacking as much crit as possible. If i squeeze my gear, i can get to the 2nd haste breakpoint (10296); now, my question is: should i somewhat neglect crit and go for that 2nd haste plateau?
Thanks in advance!

Manax: Hello Sunfyre, do you think balance druids one of the worst dps classes in mop? I mean... look at worldoflogs, there are no balance druids in the top dps sections at no boss. Always WL, Mages or hunter that are good on ranged bosses. And AOE dps poor too, compared to other classes. What do you think?

Sunfyre: It depends if you have RPPM proc'd items. If you have two RPPM items (or just the legendary meta), you'll want to do the pre-Solar start (and you immediately proc CA once you hit Solar).

Nodotx: Sunfyre, is one channelling pulse towards Lunar still the ideal opener? i.e. Starfall > Wrath > Lunar Eclipse?
I saw this reply recently on a thread:
"I'm not sure why OP still says start fight pre-lunar, long time ago I switched to Solar eclipse.
I pre pot, starfall, (one dot), CA + INCA (or 3x treants), dotting (by this time most if not all procs are up- both dots AND treants enjoy it) and starifre\ss, starfall again.
when u leave CA u auto moving to lunar eclipse- which get u 3rd starfall.
with the old opner, Until u enter lunar, and starfire\ss to 0 energy and poping ca- most procs are pretty much over :P"